US587167A - Record-book - Google Patents

Description

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G. S.WHITE.

.RECORD BOOK.

No. 587,167. Patented July 27,1897.'

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Patented July 27,1897.

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UNITED STATES PATENT EEicE.

GUSTINE SNOVVDEN VHITE, OF FRANKLIN, PENNSYLVANIA.

RECORD-BOOK.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent O. 587,167, dated Ju1y'27, 1897.

Application filed June 16,1897. Serial No. 641,021. (No model.)

T0 @ZZ whom, it may concern' Be it known that I, GUsTiNE SNowDEN VHITE, a citizen of the United States, residing at Franklin, in the county of Venango and State of Pennsylvania, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Record- Books; and I do hereby declare the following to be a full, clear, and exact description of the invention, such as will enable others skilled in the art to which it appertains to make and use the same.

' The invention relates especially to books for indexing and abstracting the records of liens, mort-gages, and transfers of title to real estate and other property, as well as the transactions of courts of record, such as judgments, orders, decrees, dec. It is illustrated and described herein as adapted to judgment-indexes only; but I would have it understood that it is adapted without change in principle of operation to other uses, among which may be mentioned the keeping of records of bills and notes discounted in banks and the records of policies in insurance ofces.

The principal object of the invention is to facilitate the work of searching the records, and this is accomplished by doing away with the necessity of referring from one book to another or from an index to different pages of the same book to find all the entries or items under a given name or designation and enabling the searcher, first, to ascertain at a glance whether there is more than one such entry in the book, and, second, in case there be a plurality of such entries to enable him to find a complete list of the same grouped together on a single page.

Other objects of the invention are to facilitate the writing up of the booksl and to enable the whole of each book to be used up completely by filling up all the pages in regular progression from beginning to end without leaving any portion .uniilled or wasted.

The invention is illustrated in the accompanying drawings, wherein, as before stated, I have only shown its adaptation to what are known as judgment-indexes.

Referring to the drawings, Figure 1 represents a double-numbered page of the body of 5o a book embodying my invention, the lefthand half being shown in the upper part of the iigure and the right-hand half in the lower part; and Fig. 2 represents one page of the alphabetical index in the front. part of the book. p

Technically speaking, the upper part of Fig. 1 shows one page of the book and the lower part the succeeding page; but. in such large books it is custom ary to double-number them-that is to say, to give the two pages that face each other the same number-and the two pages then become one in practice, and it is in this sense that I use the term page herein, though I would have it understood that where it is practicable to make the pages wide enough to contain all the ruled columns and other spaces the doublenumbering need not be employed and each page (the part that is herein called a halfpage) may be complete in itself and have its own separate ruling and number.

In Fig. 1 that portion of the page extending horizontally from the left-hand edge in the upper part of the figure to the point ain the lower part constitutes what may be called the day-book or register part of the page, because on this part the items are entered successively as they are received without any attempt to group together those that come under the same name, heading, or designation. This part of the page is ruled horizontally,- as usual, to receive the entries, one on each line, and is also provided with vertical columns to contain data appropriately descriptive of the items entered on the horizontal lines.

That portion of the page extending from the point a to the right-hand edge constitutes what might not inappropriately be termed the ledger part, for the reason that the ruling (columnar and horizontal) on this part bears substantially the same relation to that on the other part of the page that the ruling of the usual ledger does to that of the ordinary day-book, and for the further reason that this part of the page is adapted to have the entries from all the pages of the book that would properly come under the same name or heading grouped together in ledgerlike arrangement.

IOO

Later on I will describe and explain the particular ruling of the book herein illustrated, but I will state at this point that this feature of the book forms no part of my invention and may be varied to suit the requirements of particular cases. Moreover, as above explained, the ruling cf the one part of the page will have only the usual correspondence with that of the other which characterizes the relation between the ordinary day-books and ledgers of a bookkeepers set.

The only point wherein the register, or, as herein shown, the left-hand part of the pages of my hook, ditfers from the ruled pages of similar books is the column b with the heading Item number. rl`his column is an essential feature of my invention and is4 provided to contain numbers denoting the items entered, there being one number foreach horizontal line, and each such line being intended for one item. In the manufacture and sale of books constructed in accordance with my invention I greatly prefer to have these itemnumbers in the column l) printed in when the books come from the hand of the maker, but if for any reason it should be preferred not to do this the column may simply be ruled and headed by the maker in blank, and the numbers may be written in afterward by the user. In the drawings I have shown this item-number column atthe extreme left-hand side of the page, but it may be otherwise located, if desired, though I regard the location herein chosen as the most convenient and desirable. Another essential feature of the invention connected with this column is that the item-numbers contained in it should have a certain known relation to the number of pages in the book, as follows: The book illustrated in the accompanying drawings is devoted to surnames beginning with the letter N and is supposed to contain just one hundred (100) pages, and, as will be seen by reference to Fig. l, the numbers in the eolumn b begin with one hundred and one, (101.) Of course there maybe any number of pages in the book, but whatever this number may be the numbers in the item-number column must begin above that of the pages in the book, or, in other words, the smallest itemnumher or the number of the iirst item entered must exceed the highest page-number in the book. I have shown the item-num bers arranged consecutively, and this would ordinarily be the arrangement, but, if preferred, this consecutive arrangement may be departed from, the only essential thing in this connection being that cach and all the itemnumbers should be greater than the greatest number denoting the pages in the book. I have also shown the item-numbers as beginning with the number next above the highest page-number, but this is also not essential, as all that is necessary is that they should begin with some number higher than the number denoting the last page in the book.

There is nothing in that part of the page to the right of the point a, or the ledger-ruled part, as it might be called, requiring explanation or description in connection with this item-number column, except, perhaps, to state what would ordinarily be understood by those skilled in the art-viz., that said column is duplicated in the ledger part. IIere, however, it would of necessity be a 'blank column to be iilled up only as the items are grouped together from the other pages, and the numbers would seldom, if ever, follow in the order in which they are arranged in the column l) on the other part of the page.

Referring new to the second sheet of the accompanying drawings, Fig. 2 represents one page of an alphabetical index by Christian names that is arranged in the front part of the book-viz., the page containing all surnames under the letter N where thc Christian name begins with C and where the iirstvowel of all the surnames is either i, o, u7 or y I prefer to print at the top of all the pages of this index an explanation of or key to the method of numbering heretofore described, as follows: Names indexed 100 and under refer to the pages of this book upon which may bc found on the right-hand side of thc page designated by this index a list of all judgments or liens entered against any defendant. Names indexed above 100 referto the number of the judgment or lien, and defendant-s so indexed have but one judgment or lien against them. Of course it is not essential to print these directions anywhere in the book, but it is desirable on many accounts to do so, and in a book of a greater or less number of pages than one hundred (100) the directions would vary accordingly. The only essential feature of the pages of this alphabetical index is that they should have spaces for both the item-numbers and the numbers denotingthc pages of the book. rfliese spaces may consist of columns c d, one for the item-inimbcrs and one for the page-n umbers, but, if desired, the ruled columnsmay be replaced by simple spaces to receive the numbers. I regard the columnar arrangement, however, as the more desirable.

The pages of the alphabetical index need not, of course, be numbered, as they are designated in the usual way by the letters of the alphabet arranged on the margins, as shown at the right of Fig. 2. It is necessary, however, that the pages of the body of the book be numbered, and the essential requirement is, as has already been stated in a different way, that the numbers denoting the pages should all be lower than the lowest number denoting the items entered.

The construction of the book and the arrangement of its parts having thus been described, I will now explain the mode of using it in practice, making reference to the arbitrary entries ou the representation of the IOO IIO

. to them all.

-page being completely filled before the succeeding one is begun and each book being also entirely written up, leaving no blank or unused spaces, before another is required. According to the present illustration the first item in the book is a judgment against one Charlotte Noyes' in a suit brought by H. J. Hopkins. This is entered on the first line, and the names of the plaintiff and defendant are entered in the proper columns. The

headings of the other columns are sufcientlyv explanatory of other descriptive data that it may be desired to record in connection with this judgment, andmI will not, therefore, refer As soon as this item has been entered, as'above described7 it is indexed on the appropriate page of the alphabetical'index, and the number of the item is also noted in the column headed Item number, as shown at the right of Fig. 2. So long as there is only one item under the name of Charlotte Noyes the single entry on the first line of the body of the book is a complete history of all recorded transactions under that name, but

where there are a plurality of entries under any one name or designation it is essential, in order to enable the Searcher to refer to them all at one time, to group them together from the several pages where the entries are made onto one page, after the manner of a ledgeraccount. l

Referring again to the drawings, it will be noted that the second and fourth entries relate to judgments against other parties, but that the third and fifth are other judgments against Charlotte Noyes. All these are entered in the order in which they are received and are indexed as the first one was; but when the clerk comes to index the second entry under Charlotte Noyess name he notes at once that there is already an entry under that name, and instead of putting the number of the second entry in the item-number column, as he did in the case of the iirst entry, he puts the number of the page whereon this second item was entered in the column headed Page number. This indicates a plurality of items under the name of Charlotte Noyes, and he therefore proceeds to group all these together on the right-hand or ledger-like side of the page where the second entry occurred, making a concise tabular statement of all said items, as shown at the right of the lower half of Fig. l. N o further entry is now required in the alphabetical index for the reason that the number in the page-number column indicates the point in the book where all items under this name maybe found. All thatis necessary as other items coming under this name have to be entered is to post them after entry in the usual Way, as rst described,in the led ger-like statement on the proper page.

Such being the construction and manner of using my book, it will be noted that instead of dividing it up into sections, each containing a number of pages for entries coming under all Christian names beginning with a certain letter, I provide for writing up the whole book from the beginning throughout, page by page, until all are filled before another book is required and that I combine with this feature a provision for bringing together at one point all the entries under the same name or designation. This I believe to be entirely novel in this class of books, and it is accomplished by having the pages uniformly ruled and designated throughout, so that the entries may proceed from. page to page without regard to the Christian names and by dividing the pages into the two parts already described and providing them with the column for item-numbers,together with the provision of an alphabetical index having lines for the surnames or the names of the items and co1- umns or spaces for the numbers that denote the items as well as those that indicate the pages, the numbers of the items being higher than the number of pages in the book.

What I claim and desire to secure is l. An index-book consisting of numbered pages uniformly designated so as to adapt the book for the entry of items in consecutive order throughout, one portion of each page being provided with headed columns for data descriptive of the items, and a separate column for numbers progressing regularly through the book and denoting the items, and another portion of each page being ruled to adapt it for grouping together in ledger-like arrangement a plurality of items under one name or heading from the other pages, combined with an alphabetical index having spaces for the names of the items in the book, and for separate reference-numbers corresponding respectively to the numbers of the items, and

the numbers of the pages of the book where the aforesaid ledger-like grouping of items occurs.

l 2. An index-book consisting of numbered pages uniformly designated so as to adapt the book for the entry of items in consecutive order throughout, one portion of each page being provided with headed columns for data descriptive of the items, and a separate column for numbers progressing regularly through the book and denoting the items, and another portion of each page being ruled to adapt it IOO for grouping together in ledger-like arrangethe aforesaid ledgenlike grouping of items ment a plurality of items under one name or occurs. 1o heading from the other pages, combined with In testimony whereof I allix my signature an alphabetical index containing the names in presence of two witnesses.

of the items in Ihe book, and also containing' GUSTINE SNOVDEN VIIITE. separate reference numbers corresponding Witnesses:

respectively to the numbers of said ite1ns,and M. ANGELO HIRSCH,

to the numbers of the pages of the book Where BENJ. W. EDIN.

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